Education for sustainable development during civilisational collapse: The need for radical structural change

Based on over two decades of involvement with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the Global South, in this paper I raise the question of the viability of ESD in the form that it exists today. Considering the many emerging scenarios of imminent existential threats (IPCC, 2023) and even civilisational collapse (Read & Samuel, 2019), I argue that the lack of urgency in addressing these challenges through ESD is worrying, and that the continuation of ESD in a business-as-usual manner is not sustainable. I present three main arguments. One, while the field of ESD has been considerably behind other academic disciplines in incorporating critiques of colonialism (Palmeiro Neves Fonseca da Costa, 2021) (Patnaik & Patnaik, 2021), and critiques of international development (Hickel, 2017), surprisingly this knowledge is still struggling to become mainstream in ESD. Without incorporating historic analysis, connecting coloniality/modernity and their impacts to our current predicaments, it is difficult for ESD to be relevant in debates around the existential crises we face. Two, taking the example of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and tracing the history of international development aid (De Rivero, 2001) (Chang, 2002), I argue that contrary to extensively documented experience and evidence of the exploitative nature of international development, the fact that the very vocabulary and framing of ESD continues to rely on failed instruments like the SDGs (Bendell, 2022) suggests a deep structural fault line in ESD (Ali, 2022). Without a clear understanding of the global architecture of power behind international organisations and instruments, it is difficult to see how ESD could become relevant in terms of putting forward solutions to the crises. I suggest that ESD is hiding more than it is revealing, and providing a function of distraction from the urgent work that needs to be done. Three, I suggest that the question now is not how the debates, tensions and controversies in ESD can be resolved. The critical question is whether ESD can radically and structurally transform in a short timeframe and therefore remain relevant by incorporating voices and experiences from the Global South. Finally, I call for an urgent re-evaluation and re-examination of the purposes of education and a reorientation towards social relevance that goes well beyond the quest for employability. I argue for activism – praxis -- to become central to education again.